as compared to 32% who felt stress from face-to-face environments. Among the different factors mentioned, technological issues, large class sizes, and time constraints were the most significant stressors in online learning. More than half of the educators mentioned that their performance in the online environment was affected by their stress levels. Some of the symptoms that came as a by-product of stress were sleep disturbances, impatience, feeling overwhelmed and having reduced work quality (Smith, Brashen, Minor & Anthony, 2015). Findings by Dolan (2011) show that adjunct online educators were unhappy about aspects such as compensation, sense of disconnection from the institution, lack of belongingness, and feeling undervalued. In the case of the pandemic, one can only imagine how the combinations of all the different factors would affect the well-being of educators. Additionally, there is also the pressure that comes with being an educator in the digital space. Educators often find it challenging to deliver online learning as they are expected to be an expert with learning technologies to support the development of learning materials, activities and assessment methods for the online learning environment (Baran & Correia, 2014). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the sudden shift from conventional face-to-face learning to online learning may have made it harder for educators to cope with the challenges of online learning and also manage their own stress levels. Verma and Priyamnada (2020) reported that 61% of the educators were distressed from the increased workload and lack of necessary technological equipment to conduct online learning. It is important to understand how educators are going through the changes and what challenges they are facing. In this study, we will look into how online learning has impacted educators’ and learners’ health and mental wellness in Singapore, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
2.3.
Impact of online learning on learning outcomes
Previous literature has shown that compared to face-to-face learning, online learning resulted in better performance scores (Sendra-Portero, Torales-Chaparro, Ruiz-Gomez & Martinez-Morillo, 2013; Assadi et al., 2015), learning retention (Subramanian, Timberlake, Mittakanti, Lara & Brandt, 2012), engagement (Chen et al., 2010; Dumford & Miller, 2018), and likelihood to engage in deep approaches of learning (Chen et al., 2010; Paulsen & McCormick, 2020). Additionally, there were studies which compared blended learning (i.e. online learning integrated with face-to-face learning) with full face-to-face learning and found better performance scores for the blended learning groups (López-Pérez, Pérez-López and Rodríguez-Ariza, 2011; Kiviniemi, 2014; Baragash & Al-Samarraie, 2018). On the other hand, other studies suggest that there is no significant difference in learning outcomes between online learning and face-to-face learning. More specifically, there was no significant difference in learner grades (Driscoll, Jicha, Hunt, Tichavsky, & Thompson, 2012; Thompson et al., 2012; Cavanaugh & Jacquemin, 2015; Francescucci and Rohani, 2019), satisfaction (Driscoll et al., 2012; Thompson et al., 2012), performance (Heiman et al., 2012), and knowledge gains (Holmes & Reid, 2017). The National Research Center for Distance Education and Technological Advancement (DETA) owns a database to expand the literature on learning outcomes between alternate modes of education delivery (DETA, n.d.), and a majority of the studies included in this database supports the notion that there is no significant difference between the alternate modes of education delivery, which includes online learning. In terms of evaluation of learning outcomes, while there has been concern over the academic integrity of online learning and assessment (Mukthar et al., 2020), one particular study by Stack (2015) attempted to control the testing environment for the learners’ final examination by conducting it on campus for both 14
